


Stumble Into History

by sevenfists



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-01
Updated: 2006-07-01
Packaged: 2018-10-24 10:06:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10739490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfists/pseuds/sevenfists
Summary: Coming back to the world was worse than leaving it had been. John stepped off the plane in Los Angeles. The air felt cool to him, even though he knew it wasn't really. He'd only had one drink on the flight, but he felt hung over anyway. He felt like an animal. The US was too bright and fast, too clean, too restless. He wasn't ready for it.





	Stumble Into History

**Author's Note:**

> For vylit's Johnny Cash Ficathon. My song was "The Ballad of Ira Hayes."

Coming back to the world was worse than leaving it had been. John stepped off the plane in Los Angeles. The air felt cool to him, even though he knew it wasn't really. He'd only had one drink on the flight, but he felt hung over anyway. He felt like an animal. The US was too bright and fast, too clean, too restless. He wasn't ready for it.  
  
In the airport, a hippie girl sneered at him and spit on his boot. John thought, _Welcome home_.

***

John's best friend in Vietnam was a skinny black kid from Alabama. His real name was Melvin, but all the guys called him Jackal, because of the crazy high-pitched way he laughed. On John's first night with the squad, Jackal asked him if it was true that white guys liked taking it up the ass, and then shrieked with laughter at John's wide eyes.  
  
"I take it that's why they call you Jackal," John said, realizing he'd been had.  
  
"Damn right it is!" Jackal hollered.

Jackal taught John how to cheat at poker without looking like he was cheating, how to strike a match one-handed, and how to get leeches off with bug spray. Years later, John remained convinced that he wouldn't have made it through that first month if Jackal hadn't been there to steal all his cigarettes and laugh at every dumb mistake he made.

Two weeks before he went back to the world, Jackal was killed in Cang Tay, near Que Son. He had two baby sisters at home, so when the little girl came running up to him, he knelt down and opened his arms to catch her up in a hug. Sarge barely had time to yell Jackal's name before the grenade exploded.

John kept Jackal's gold cross necklace and his beat-up pack of cards. He always meant to return them to Jackal's mama when he got back to the States, but somehow he never got around to it.

***

On the march south toward Quang Nam, John got amoebic dysentery.

"I told you not to drink that damn water," Sarge said, shaking his head at John.

"Aw, he's too dumb to follow orders," Nancy Drew said.

Mousetrap punched Nancy Drew in the shoulder. "You're one to talk, you ain't said a smart thing since the day you was born."

"Y'all shut the hell up, he's busy voiding his bowels," Jackal said, and the guys all laughed, but they wandered off and left John to suffer in peace.

"I want to die," John told Jackal. He was crouched over the latrine pit with his pants around his ankles.

Jackal handed him another cigarette and a canteen of water. "It ain't that bad. I got malaria once, all hallucinating and shit. Son, that went way past _wanting_ to die and on into thinking I was _gonna_."

"It's a good thing you're here to cheer me up."

"Shit, you telling me, Peanut," Jackal said. John still didn't know why Jackal had started calling him Peanut, but the name had stuck. "You ain't got me, you'd still be trying to peel leeches off your hairy ass with your fingernails."

The sad thing, John thought, was that it was true.

***

The Bronze Star was for the A Shau Valley. It was a load of steaming bullshit: John hadn't done anything other than pull Sarge out of the line of fire. He almost refused the medal, but Sarge made him take it. They lost Nancy Drew in the A Shau, and Picker, and Cottonmouth.

The Purple Heart was because he got shot in the thigh by some scared VC kid.

The Expert Rifle Badge was for hiding in the undergrowth and shooting some other scared VC kid. Sarge made him take that one, too.

***

"Hey, what about her," Jackal said, grinning, his teeth shining white against his dark skin.

The girl he was looking at couldn't have been more than sixteen. John took a drag off his cigarette. "She's all yours."

"Shit, Peanut, why you never want any VC loving?"

"You want your dick to rot off, go right ahead. I'm happy with mine as it is." He never talked about Mary. Some things were private.

***

John turned nineteen in-country, while they were camped out near An Khe, waiting for orders. The guys gave him a pile of cigarettes from their C-rations, and a slice of pound cake with a burning match stuck in it. Bigfoot led them in a rousing, off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday Dear Peanut." Sarge put John over his lap and spanked him nineteen times, plus once for good luck. The guys all howled with laughter. John took it grinning, too stupid off cheap Vietnamese beer to care.

Jackal took him off into the bush and they smoked a joint. "That's the good shit, little man," Jackal said. "Paid two packs of Luckys for this. You best be grateful."

"You're a cheap motherfucker," John said.

"Just like my mama raised me."

Before he passed out that night, John pulled out the latest letter from Mary and read it again. She talked about her job as a secretary in a law office, her mother's redecorating ventures, her older brother's wedding. He'd read it so many times the creases had gone soft and were starting to split apart. He traced his fingers over her signature, the looping M, the tail of the Y trailing off toward the edge of the paper.

***

When Dean was seventeen, he wanted to join the Marines. "You were in Vietnam when you were my age," he argued, petulant, seventeen.

John put his foot down. "I need you here. Sammy needs you," he said, playing his ace card, and Dean didn't mention it again after that. The truth was, John still dreamed about the subtle wriggling of maggots left in a wound to keep it clean, and woke from it shocked and twitching. He had seen a lot of horrible things during his years of hunting, but none of them compared to what he had seen in the war.

His boys thought they knew everything about the world, but Vietnam wasn't the world; it had been something else entirely.

***

His first day in Vietnam, John stepped off the plane into an ocean of heat. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of diesel fuel. The jungle sprawled out along the edge of the air base's concertina wire fencing, the green mountains rising up in the distance. John didn't know what was going to happen next, but he had his M-40 and his combat boots. He was ready.  



End file.
